I'm a drummer who owns a guitar which I do not play well. This blog is a chronical of my guitar playing experience with Rocksmith.
I mostly play a Michael Kelly Valor II with coil-split humbuckers and a Fender MIM Telecaster (and a few others). I play on XBox 360/Live using a wireless transmitter. My kids play, too (Fender Squier Strat and Washburn/Lyon LG115) and I'll cover some of their Rocksmith experiences if they can ever stay un-grounded long enough to use the XBox.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

"Breed" Master Mode and Frustration with "Angela"

I've been going through my songs to see which phrases are below 100% so I can decide what to work on. Angela and Breed came up next on the list last night.

I was having trouble with the solo (what else?) on Breed, but I nailed it last night after adjusting my tuning. The double-stops with my third string just wouldn't register as hits in Riff Repeater. I messed with tuning until Riff Repeater Free Speed finally liked what I had. From that point, it was pretty quick and dirty to max the solo. From there, it was a short hop to my 4th Master Mode unlock. Barely. Got 101066 (95/70). That was my 29th play through the song with two rounds on Riff Repeater to work the solo.

I have maxed all phrases of Next Girl and have a score of 101,993 - but no Master Mode unlock. I need to double-check the Riff Repeater to make sure nothing has gotten leveled down, but there may be a software glitch here. I'm guessing once you level up to Max in Riff Repeater you have to go back and play the whole song again - even if you have a score over 100,000 before you Max out the phrases in Riff Repeater.

Makes me wonder why the software even allows you to reach 100,000 RSP if you don't have all the phrases leveled up to 100%. But, apparently it does.

Other songs, on the other hand, don't seem to allow you to get 100,000 RSP no matter what you do.

Angela, for example. This is a veryeasy song. Even the solo is easy. I consistently get 98% accuracy and I've had a couple of streaks in excess of 220 notes. Yet, so far my high score is only 99,946. I cannot seem to get a 100,000 score on this one. WTF? I guess those 2% are holding me back but I cannot figure out which notes I'm missing. In fact, since I get a "Perfect Phrase" message every two measures, it's a little hard to believe that I'm missing 2% of the notes. When I watch the screen, it looks a helluva lot like I'm getting 100% note accuracy. Is there some weird hammer note or something I'm missing here? We'll see.

I've also noticed that the Single Note and Combo arrangements of Angela appear to be identical. . . If there's a difference, I can't see or hear it.

Having a similar issue with Surf Hell. I'm not nailing it quite as well as Angela but I've got all phrases maxed out and cannot seem to reach 100,000 RSP. High score so far is 96,365 (93/90). Weird.

I'm also cleaning up my tracking spreadsheets in preparation for making them available - possibly as an ebook or maybe on CD through an online auction site. I've actually had requests, so I decided to get serious about it. More on this as I get closer to releasing something usable.

I've got to remember to note my play count on songs that I've unlocked at Master Mode. I'd like to track how many times I've got to play stuff before I get to that level. So far I've got 4 songs unlocked. I also need to see how many songs have multiple arrangements and how many for each. Even though you only see 51 songs in the original song list, I'm thinking you get closer to 125 different arrangements altogether. Maybe more.